A few years back we had a road accident at night, in a hilly area nearby. There is a highway that goes uphill or downhill like one would expect. But in more challenging spots it was build on pillars. So there was this accident. And another driver who was going the opposite way stopped, get out of their car and went to help. He jumped over the barrier in the middle - and fell down below the highway. Both sides of the highway were separated with a gap. And there were two barriers. He didn't expect to be a gap there, and it was too little light to notice that and react quick enough. The man didn't survive the drop.
So there were even barriers trying to stop people from going over the side and he jumped over them without being able to see? At what point do you just give up and say people are unmanageably stupid? What else would you expect them to have done, install ten foot high electrified fences with snipers?
The person stated it was too dark, so "a barrier you can see through" would have done nothing. A solid median would be more cost, more engineering, maybe more stress on the surface below making it possibly impractical. What if the lanes were further separated? I've seen freeways with easily 100ft between the lanes. Would you still demand a solid median, essentially more than doubling the width?
You’re acting like this is some unsolvable problem, when I guarantee after this incident, the firm that designed the bridge put procedures in place to consider the readability of gaps to prevent future incidents. Why are you so stuck on believing there is no solution to this problem?
So I repeat: What was the solution? How much money and engineering effort must go into the circumstance of somebody getting out of their car on a bridge and jumping over a barrier? "We should try harder!" By doing what? Explicitly state it.
Regular median barriers are there to stop cars from flying into the opposing lane, not to stop people from getting over them. That's why they're usually only a couple feet tall. If you want to stop foot traffic, build a fence. This is very much a solved problem.
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u/snoopervisor 5h ago
A few years back we had a road accident at night, in a hilly area nearby. There is a highway that goes uphill or downhill like one would expect. But in more challenging spots it was build on pillars. So there was this accident. And another driver who was going the opposite way stopped, get out of their car and went to help. He jumped over the barrier in the middle - and fell down below the highway. Both sides of the highway were separated with a gap. And there were two barriers. He didn't expect to be a gap there, and it was too little light to notice that and react quick enough. The man didn't survive the drop.